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This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?

Max Planck

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.
MAX PLANCK

Experiment Measurement Nature Question Record Science
This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?
MAX PLANCK

Harmony Human Independence Law Man Nature Old Order Subject
I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.
MAX PLANCK

Noble Science Search Worth
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
MAX PLANCK

Happiness Himself Possession Rich Seek Truth
The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.
MAX PLANCK

Condition Ideas Imagination Man New Occasion
In all my research I have never come across matter. To me the term matter implies a bundle of energy which is given form by an intelligent spirit.
MAX PLANCK

Energy Intelligence Research Science Spirit
What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious.
MAX PLANCK

Appearance Harmony Quite Simplicity
The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.
MAX PLANCK

Fragment Nature Vast World
Scientific work will never stop, and it would be terrible if it did. If there were no more problems, you would put your hands in your pockets and your head on a pillow and would work no more. In science rest is stagnation, rest is death.
MAX PLANCK

Death Hands Science Stop Terrible Work
The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction-that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist-and before any science there is first of all belief. For me, it is belief in a complete lawfulness in everything that happens.
MAX PLANCK

Conscience High Law Science
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘Ye must have faith.’
MAX PLANCK

Engagement Kind Science Serious Temple Word Work Writing
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
MAX PLANCK

Existence Force Intelligence Mindset Origin Virtue
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
MAX PLANCK

Conscious Existence Fundamental Myself Regard Spiritual Talk
Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.
MAX PLANCK

Law Religion Science
Those scientists who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
MAX PLANCK

Entertainment Ideas Rich Science Thinking
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
MAX PLANCK

Death Generation Light Science Success Truth

This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?

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This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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